Document processing devices include printers, copiers, scanners and e-mail gateways. More recently, devices employing two or more of these functions are found in office environments. These devices are referred to as multifunction peripherals (MFPs) or multifunction devices (MFDs). As used herein, MFP means any of the forgoing.
Operations of document processing devices such as printing, faxing or copying may include depletion of consumables, such as paper, ink or toner. Document processing devices may include counters or other usage monitoring systems to allow for attending to maintenance or servicing operations at known intervals. Monitoring of device operation facilitates replacement of such consumables and facilitates assessing charges for device use. In other situations, monitoring of device operation facilitates imposition of usage quotas.
Given the expense in obtaining and maintain MFPs, MFPs are frequently shared by users and monitored by technicians via a data network. MFPs can be monitored using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Each brand or model of MFP monitored via SNMP includes a management information base (MIB) with multiple Object Identifiers (OIDs) that define each kind of data on the MFP that can be monitored. Example OIDs can include data such a counters, paper usage, color printing, toner levels and so forth.
However, in order to monitor document processing devices remotely, a server requires information about the document processing devices to be monitored. For example, a server may need to be pre-configured with the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of each remote document processing devices that is to be monitored. Each time a new document processing device is added to the network, the remote server may need to be updated with configuration data about the added document processing device in order to monitor the device.